


what heals, what doesn’t

by bao (sunwukong)



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 06:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14806358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunwukong/pseuds/bao
Summary: Juza is bad with his words, so he keeps getting into fights. Banri is bad with his feelings, so he watches the aftermath.Set during Bad Boy Portrait.





	what heals, what doesn’t

**Author's Note:**

  * For [penkipenguin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/penkipenguin/gifts).



It took Banri two weeks to recover from Hyodo Juza kicking his ass.

He knew the guys he hung out with at school would laugh at his split lip and black eye turning yellow-green if he showed his face. So instead he skipped and spent his time doing so much nothing—not much different than the usual, really, except now he carried the shameful feeling that he was running and hiding after a defeat. Morning to night, he turned over in the resentment and anger and humiliation and—like an electric current that ran right down to the tips of his fingers, that he feels sharply in the bruises all over his body—excitement.

It took Banri two weeks for his ribs to stop screaming at him when he moved, for the scuffs and scratches on his face and arms to heal over, for his hands to form fists again without aching.

What didn’t mend itself in those two weeks was his memory of Hyodo’s expression as he turned away—disdainful, disinterested.

***

Hyodo Juza hunches up his shoulders and makes himself as small as possible, seeming so ill-fitting in every space he inhabits, even MANKAI company. He thanks Omi for the late-night snacks, but doesn’t make eye contact as he tucks into them; he backs up against the wall when Muku passes by on his way to pick up the latest volume of his favorite manga and more muslin for costume mock-ups with Yuki.

It’s annoying to watch.

Sometimes Hyodo still comes back to room 104 an hour or two after classes have ended at O High. It’s not like he has after-school clubs (or, even less likely, after-school dates), so Banri _knows_ from the way Taichi and Tenma try too hard to talk about all the mundane things that happened that day. It’s on those days that Hyodo tries to shrink into himself even more, folding his huge frame and his long limbs into a self-imposed space that’s much too small. It’s such a comically futile effort that Banri wants to burst out laughing. But watching him, more than anything, makes Banri want to grab his shoulders and shake him until those confines shatter.

Hyodo is the first person who Banri has ever lost to in his life, and it infuriates him that he refuses to own the space that he inhabits as someone actually worth losing to.

***

_“—I always wanted to become someone else.”_

After his one-man act, Banri realizes there’s another of Hyodo’s expressions that he can’t forget.

Because sometimes Hyodo still returns to the dorms with scuffed-up knuckles, dirt on the sleeves of his uniform jacket. Banri knows he tried to clean up the worst of the blood with his own clumsy hands in the school bathroom, hoping and praying that Director-chan wouldn’t notice or comment. Their debut performance is coming up, after all, and Sakyo-san promised that if anyone dared to mess up their appearance now, he would personally kill them.

Hyodo’s glare when he drops his bag on the floor of their room says, “If you say a word, you’re dead.”

“Don’t make that stupid face. I’m not gonna tell on you.”

More than the scratches and the bruises, Banri sees something raw and red and hurting in Hyodo’s eyes. It’s the part of Hyodo that ripped into his core when he watched his portrait and left something unfamiliar and pulsing and burning; the part of Hyodo that still screams, let me change, let me be someone different than the person I am.

He watches Hyodo more closely and more often than he wants to admit to himself, after all.

***

“You two should open up your positions here,” Director-chan says, moving Hyodo by his shoulders. “Since you’re both tall, you’ll make the scene unclear if you’re covering each other up. You want to make sure the audience can make out your movements.” Banri nods, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his jacket.

Luciano takes up space with his personality, his wide grin and his wild laughter. Whether they’re working back-to-back or exchanging staged blows like in this scene, it’s easy to play off Lansky’s imposing tacitness. During practice, Banri sees the yearning that Hyodo carries transform into a burning passion. Even a complete _daikon_ can take you by surprise, so when Hyodo’s cocky smirk comes as if it’s the most natural expression he could make, Banri thinks, _this is the Hyodo I wanted to see._

By the time they start rehearsing in costume, Hyodo grows about six inches when he’s Lansky, his back straightening the moment he buttons up his vest and slips on his leather shoulder holsters. Since their outfits cover them from head to toe, Banri doesn’t have to know if there are bruises on Hyodo’s forearm. Since they’re acting, Hyodo doesn’t have to let anyone know if he’s hiding anything under his black gloves.

Lansky can walk across the stage as if he owns it; Lansky has no qualms about throwing his huge stature around to make a point. Banri finds himself obsessed with the way adrenaline runs all through his body during practice, tracing the same path etched in the bruises that Hyodo left after their first meeting. Hyodo is the first person who Banri has looked at and understood, even if just a little, the thrill of sweating and striving to become someone else. So it annoys him all the more to see Hyodo default to folding into himself when he steps offstage. Even when the little scratches come less and less frequently these days, it makes the rawness in Hyodo’s expression each time that much more striking.

“You shouldn’t make Taichi and Tenma worry, you know.”

“Shut up. Stop nagging.”

If Banri’s healing wounds had felt like excitement, he thinks that Hyodo’s must feel like inescapable regret, every time, over and over. It took Banri two weeks to recover from Hyodo kicking his ass. He wonders how long it takes for someone to recover from a lifetime of being exactly the person others expected you to be, and hating it all the while.

***

The week leading up to their opening performance is the same week Hyodo gains a fresh set of minor scratches, and the same week a new cafe opens right off of Hanasaki’s campus. The girls in Banri’s class have been talking about the strawberry tart; Masumi isn’t interested, but Kazunari, of course, calls it “soo instagrammable~!” when Banri mentions it. So Banri drags Sakuya along with the promise of treating him and runs into the line of students waiting up and down the block for a table or a takeout order before he sees the cafe itself. It’s just like Hyodo to be a pain even when really, this was all Banri’s idea to begin with, but whatever—he has time.

Banri won’t(—can’t—)be sweet to Hyodo, but he can buy him sweets.

When Banri returns to their room, Hyodo is at his desk hunched over a textbook and taking diligent notes. He doesn’t ask Hyodo what’s going on. They’re not friends like that. And even though Banri’s learning that maybe he’s not too bad at that kind of thing—being the concerned leader is obviously just something else that comes on easy mode these days—Hyodo is an exception, he’s always been.

“I went out with some friends after class, and they ordered more than they could finish. So.”

Hyodo is an idiot, but he’s not that much of an idiot, so he knows when Banri is lying through his teeth. He’s not that much of an idiot, so he lets the pretense stand, instead turning his attention to the small box that Banri deposits on his desk.

“Don’t complain later that you didn’t get any.”

Hyodo is never more delicate than he is when opening packages of cookies from home or limited-edition pudding flavors. His huge, rough hands seem like they might not even fit when he pulls the slice of tart out of its white-and-pink box. But the raw skin on his knuckles looks less red next to the glazed strawberries.

**Author's Note:**

> Banri is always making comments about Juza’s face... How much time does he spend staring at it...


End file.
